tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58236067655587913952024-03-13T03:14:44.600-07:00Donald Patinkin Econ 490 Fall 2012Donald Patinkin Econ 490 Fall 2012http://www.blogger.com/profile/11455675400338718924noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5823606765558791395.post-54682906816876804362012-10-29T16:08:00.001-07:002012-10-29T16:08:36.990-07:00Group ExperiencesThe last two group projects that I have worked on here at U of I are good examples of how a group experience can be drastically different based on who is participating and what the end result of the project is. In the first group, we were tasked with writing up a portfolio of documents and giving a presentation in front of our technical writing class as our final project. Mainly due to the actions of one of the members in the group, the project did not go as well as it could have and the other members were forced to work harder in order to pick up the one member's slack. In the other group, we were also assigned a presentation and it went much smoother, as the group worked much better together and we all contributed valuable pieces of the finished project.<br />
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As I mentioned, the first project did not go smoothly. The tasks we were given were not difficult, but they would have been much easier to accomplish if all four members of our group were working at their full capacity. However, one member was consistently not doing his share of the work or contributing useful ideas to our conversations. After the first week or so of working on the project, the other three of us felt uncomfortable delegating tasks to him that would need to be completed outside of our regular meetings and took it upon ourselves to do most of the "heavy lifting" on the presentation. As a result of our lack of confidence in our partner, we tried to mitigate our perceived losses in productivity that we thought we would be opening ourselves up to by simply doing the work ourselves. There were one or two times when we expressed out concern about his lack of contribution to the group, but he never changed his approach to the project and we never really pressed the issue. This was probably because the three of us were not fond of confrontation and just wanted to get the project done without a full-blown argument that could have caused hurt feelings and dragged us down even further. Maybe this was the wrong decision and we could have changed his attitude if we were more strict and possibly even gotten a better grade on the presentation, but since the personalities in the group were more passive than confrontational, we proceeded as we did instead.<br />
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In contrast to this bad experience from working with a group, I was assigned a group project in a political science course I took over the summer that went very well. All three of us in the group got on very well with each other and our presentation ended up being pretty well done as a result. One of the contributing factors to how well our group functioned was how our personalities meshed. One member of our group was a clear leader who enjoyed the role and was good at it to boot. He was consistently the first one with a rough idea of what we could do and was open to suggestions from myself and our other member on how we could refine his ideas. Myself and the third group member were more contemplative by nature and while we may not have been as assertive, we were able to contribute meaningful portions of the finished presentation. Another factor in the success of our group was that everyone clearly understood their roles within the group and what we needed to do between each meeting. We enjoyed working together and I for one would have felt terrible if I slacked between meetings and forced the other two members to make up for my errors, and I'm sure they felt the same way. This non-verbal trust to keep up with deadlines and the quality of our work was definitely a contributing factor in how well out project turned out.<br />
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Overall, I would say that commitment to the group and communication within the group are two of the strongest determinants of whether or not a group succeeds at their given task. in the first example, the communication between all of our members was not as strong as it should have been and out finished product suffered as a result. In comparison, the second group I was a part of worked together very well and stayed on task better, and our presentation was well-received.Donald Patinkin Econ 490 Fall 2012http://www.blogger.com/profile/11455675400338718924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5823606765558791395.post-23887984803120790042012-09-27T14:13:00.000-07:002012-09-27T14:13:04.965-07:00Opportunism and Non-Optimal BehaviorIn any field, especially economics, one expects individuals to act in a certain way; namely that they will behave as "rational" consumers or producers and work above all else to maximize their efficiency or surplus. Therefore we would also assume that when an opportunity presents itself for an individual or firm to take advantage of a situation or offer that will boost their immediate gains, they will accept this better offer. However, sometimes individuals do not act opportunistically and defy these expectations that we as economists generally make. Why would they behave like this? There are several popular explanations that have been given in the past, namely that these people could be acting as "good citizens" and have some moral obligation to act rationally, or that they figure that if they wait, the situations may get even better. Either way, everyone has probably found themselves in a situation to take advantage of a situation that would save them money, time, or resources and sometimes we may not have jumped at those opportunities quite as quickly as one might imagine.<br />
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In a previous post, I talked about my time as a runner in high school. My teams (track and cross country) were very good, ranked in the top 12 in our state for most of my career a number of our runners, myself included, drew the attention of some universities. We had several coaches visit out school and meet with us to discuss scholarships and the universities themselves. A few of us were lucky enough to receive substantial offers from a couple of Division II schools from the Midwest and west coast, and some of us accepted those offers. I however, did not accept a scholarship that could have saved me almost $120 thousand that I will pay off over the next several years as a result of choosing to attend U of I. Clearly, this is not a decision made lightly and not one that would have maximized my preferences from a purely economic standpoint, so why did I choose to not act opportunistically in this case?<br />
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Most important to me was the academic side of the equation. While most of these universities had fine running programs, I was on track to pursue a degree in engineering and none of the schools in question had programs that rivaled my top choices for an engineering degree which were Illinois and Georgia Tech, neither of which had offered me any money to run for them. So while I would have been saving money to go to school, I would have been compromising academics to do so. Also, I was not quite sure I would stay in engineering my entire time at university (clearly that intuition was correct) and I wanted to attend a school that had a variety of options to choose from should I decide that nuclear engineering was not for me. Again, the universities that were interested in me as a runner were often smaller than either of my top choices and less diverse in major choices. Overall, I chose a path that would cost me more money in the short run in order to pursue a degree that I would enjoy and that would pay off better for me in the future.<br />
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This brings us back to the differences in why people may choose to not act in an opportunistic fashion. In my case, I subscribed more to the "good things come to those who wait" model, in that I made a decision that was financially non-optimal in the short run but appealed to me in the long run. This is a different set of reasons than people who may act non-optimally because they feel they are being a "good citizen" for doing so. This second line of reasoning appeals more to the moral side of things and was not really at all applicable to my case. Therefore, while both of these schools of thought work to explain why some people may choose to not act opportunistically, they are functionally very different in their more explicit reasoning as to why people behave the way they do.Donald Patinkin Econ 490 Fall 2012http://www.blogger.com/profile/11455675400338718924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5823606765558791395.post-45228512084611084262012-09-11T16:02:00.001-07:002012-09-11T16:02:26.372-07:00The Structure of a Track TeamAt this point in my life, I have been a part of several organizations ranging anywhere from holding part time jobs, to being involved in school clubs, to joining bands. Each of the organizations I have participated in had some sort of structure or hierarchy, from the simplest possible arrangements (everyone has equal say in the decisions of a local metal band) to more complex structures evident in some of the jobs I have held throughout the last few years. However, the most interesting of all these structures was that of my high school track team. Like any other organization, it had a definite structure in which every team member had some place, from athletes to head coaches. The track team was especially interesting to me because unlike the jobs I have had at strictly entry-level positions, I was actually able to move up in the hierarchy a step to team captain and was able to experience a little of what middle management must feel like.<br />
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The exact structure of a track team may be a little more complex than one might imagine. First off, under the umbrella of the team as a whole, there were four branches of the team; throwers (shot put and discus), jumpers (long, triple, high, and pole vault), sprinters, and the group closest to my own heart, distance runners. The team was run by a single head coach, who was responsible for logistical issues like entering the team in meets around the state, promoting the team at our school, and generally overseeing the team. under the head coach were head coaches for each unit of the team (jumpers, sprinters, throwers, and distance runners) whose duties mainly included creating and scheduling workouts for the athletes. These head unit coaches sometimes had assistant coaches if the group of athletes was large enough to warrant having them. Namely, the sprinters and distance runners at my school always had assistant coaches while the throwing and jumping teams were small enough to only require a single coach (in this case, the head coach doubled as the head sprinting coach too). These assistant coaches would oversee workouts for different groups of athletes within each unit, depending on their level of athleticism (usually) or their specific event (rarely). Under the assistant coaches were athletes and captains. Captains were picked from each unit and the number varied depending on the year and how many kids the coaches felt were responsible enough for leadership roles. It just so happened that my senior year we had something like 10 or 12 captains, a fairly large number in my experience. Captains were responsible for keeping the other athletes in line during workouts and making sure that everyone was being tested athletically. This was especially important for distance running, where our daily workout could range anywhere from 5 to 12 miles depending on how fast you were. Below captains of course were athletes, who did the workouts and actually competed in meets, as did the captains.<br />
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What separates my time in track (as well as cross country, but that organization was much simpler) from other organizations that I have been a part of was the fact that I was able to move out of the "entry-level" so to speak. In the case of track and cross country, it was that I moved up to captain my senior year. As captains, we sometimes had the responsibility of creating workouts when coaches weren't around and more importantly communicating with the coaches if we thought there were any problems at the lower levels of the team. We were also able to aid in decisions such as if a particular runner should start doing a harder workout if he had been performing very well recently. Furthermore, we got to know our fellow athletes on a more personal basis by actually running with them, and we took some of their feedback into account when we had to design workouts or summer running schedules when coaches weren't present. Overall, we acted as an intermediary between athletes and coaches and were therefore a conduit through which much information flowed, both from athletes up the chain and vice-versa. My time spent on both track and cross country was definitely time well spent, and it definitely gave me valuable leadership experience that I am still thankful for today.Donald Patinkin Econ 490 Fall 2012http://www.blogger.com/profile/11455675400338718924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5823606765558791395.post-44318794118800502202012-09-05T16:46:00.001-07:002012-09-05T16:46:03.036-07:00Don Patinkin Bio<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www2.lse.ac.uk/middleEastCentre/Events/2011/Images/Kleiman1_150x220.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www2.lse.ac.uk/middleEastCentre/Events/2011/Images/Kleiman1_150x220.jpg" /></a></div>
Don Patinkin was an Israeli economist who was most widely recognized for his book "Money, Interest, and Prices," and for his tenure as president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem which lasted from 1982 until he resigned in 1986 due to the university's declining finances. Patinkin was born on January 8, 1922 in Chicago and lived until August 7, 1995 when he passed away in Jerusalem. He attended the undergraduate program at the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago, and subsequently earned his Ph.D in economics from the University of Chicago. I was not aware of Patinkin's work prior to this assignment, but he seems to have had a great impact on the development of Keynesian economics.<br />
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Patinkin is generally classified as a neo-Keynesian economist and his "Money, Interest, and Prices," a commentary on monetary macroeconomics, has been described as, "the book that (John Maynard) Keynes never wrote." Patinkin was also a contributor to the theory of disequilibrium economics, which developed some of the ideas of traditional Keynesian economics and compared them to the more classical approach of economists such as Léon Walras.<br />
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While his research was groundbreaking, Patinkin's work does not seem all that relevant to this class. His research mainly focused on macroeconomics, and not the interactions that occurred within firms. That being said, Patinkin's research was based on the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics, but he never did concern his research with interactions at the single firm level.Donald Patinkin Econ 490 Fall 2012http://www.blogger.com/profile/11455675400338718924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5823606765558791395.post-62300048115706928872012-09-05T13:56:00.000-07:002012-09-05T13:56:19.162-07:00Test PostThis is a test post.Donald Patinkin Econ 490 Fall 2012http://www.blogger.com/profile/11455675400338718924noreply@blogger.com0